Murder by Death

Thursday was my final day of work before the holidays.  Anyone with long memories will remember that my job is part-time and has always been a lot of hurry up and wait, with more wait than hurry up.  Not this year.  This year started off hideously and never got better.  My normal workload increased by 100% and then in June I got suckered into taking on another contract, doubling my work days to 4 and tripling my workload. No hyperbole: my contract with the state is for 3.5 days a week, but I've been working 40 hour weeks. 

I am exhausted; my house is a wreck - not just the normal SOP wreck, but the Christmas Edition Wreck.  It looks like a bomb detonated in my lounge room and took out several rolls of gift wrap and ribbon. Every time I start to get ahead some fool comes up with something else I "have" to do. Usually, that fool is me.

But today was a pretty good day.  Nothing got done, mind you, and in fact, I've added to my list of "have" to dos.  But I don't care:  I'm on vacation.

It's berry season here. An Aussie Christmas tradition for me and MT, is to go with some friends to a U-Pick farm outside the city and stock up on cherries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, loganberries, strawberries, etc. both for eating fresh and freezing.  It's fun, it's cheaper than buying them at the shops and afterwards our friends' two boys both look like they've been committing bloody mayhem.

So now we can add berries to the bomb site:

That's about half of what we brought home - the other half is either in the freezer already or in the dehydrator (I'm doing a batch of dried cherries). 

Like the u-pick farms in the States, you can eat whatever you want as you pick, so of course I was starving when we were finished.  Probably a protein deficit; I had cookies for breakfast - 'tis the season and all.  Oddly, I got it into my head that I HAD to have a meat pie.  Meat pies are a staple here, but you have to know where to go to find ones that taste like they aren't made from questionable species.  So I decided I'd make my own.  I used a Jamie Oliver recipe for mince meat and onion pie.  Pretty easy really.

I browned onions, carrots and celery (the celery in my garden bolted, so I just used the leaves) with some minced rosemary and 2 bay leaves, added some mustard powder and Worcestershire sauce.  The recipe called for Marmite, but its cousin Vegemite is banned from the pantry (per MT, not me) so I skipped it.  I mixed in a litre of water with a veggie bullion cube dissolved in it and a splash of red wine, which the recipe didn't call for but eh, why not?  Simmered for an hour until it was thick enough to call it a pie filling.

I couldn't be bothered digging out a pie pan, so I put it in two small rectangular pans.  One for now, and one for later.

An hour in the oven:

(temporarily shoved to the side of the plate to catch it in profile.)

Yum. Totally hit the spot. 

Now MT is out at a soccer game and I have the house to myself in all its bombed out silence.  I plan to do nothing domestically constructive, save catching up on some festive tasks, and some personal book cataloguing.  I am ready for my happy holiday.  :)